gratuitous advice for careerists seeking "post-change" surgery

Far be it from me to offer career advice to others, especially to people who are more successful than I am. But I find success almost as intriguing as failure, and the reasons why people succeed in life are at least as worthy of study as the reasons they fail, as are the reasons why some people achieve success on a grander scale than others who seem to be at least as "deserving." Deserving might not be the right word, as it implies a moral judgment and I don't mean it that way. It might strike me, for example, that reasonable people are more "deserving" of success than unreasonable people. But in settings where success is determined by emotion, hysteria, and hype, the idea that the "reasonable" people are more "deserving" of success is unreasonable on its face.

Whether she is "reasonable" or not, from a blogger perspective, Amanda Marcotte is a success by any standard. She writes for the highly successful Pandagon, having replaced Jesse Taylor who went on to greater things.

But wait!

Before he left for greater things, Jesse Taylor was kind enough to accuse me of "grade-B wingnuttia," and "humorless, clueless, mildly dishonest weaseldom."

It's not easy for a grade B wingnut like me to have merited even a mention by the hugely successful Pandagon, but I'm glad it didn't make me cocky, for I now see that the post has been pulled! Instead of snarky remarks about the humorless and clueless Grade B wingnut, there's just a boring error code:

Error 404 - Not Found

Search bar and other tools go here! If you're reading this, it needs to be implemented, remind me!

Feeling utterly dejected and rejected, I did a couple of things. First, I went to the Wayback Machine and looked through Pandagon's archives until I found the original post, dated August 21, 2005.

Phew! At least it was still there, even if relegated to a sort of blogospheric black hole. Its existence probably negates any thoughts I might have of suing Pandagon for pulling the post about me under a shaky legal theory of "unlibel."

But still, I wondered about this pulling of posts. Is there some rule now that bloggers who get important jobs working for politicians have to clean up their acts by doing anticipatory damage control?

It's probably an oxymoron to speak of politics and ethics in the same breath, but isn't sanitizing one's past by erasing blog posts the cyber equivalent of shredding old employment records?

I try to be fair, though, and I wanted to make sure that the post in question really had been pulled before making such an accusation. So, I went back to the search bar as instructed in Pandagon's 404 Error, and entered "grade b wingnuttia" in the box. Much to my amazement, the post was still there, but with a different URL!

But instead of "Posted by Jesse Taylor" it now says "Published by Amanda."

Now I'm really confused. I thought Jesse Taylor had insulted me. Now it's Amanda. What gives here?

Here at Classical Values, there are several bloggers, but I guess I am the publisher, since I am the one who owns the Classical Values URL and pays for the blog to be hosted. Not knowing who owns Pandagon, I ran a whois on the URL, and it reads, "Registrant: Jesse Taylor." Wouldn't that mean Jesse Taylor is the publisher? So what gives Amanda Marcotte the right to "take over" his posts and claim them as her own?

Something about this is very peculiar. It's not so much that I mind what Jesse and/or Amanda said about me. (Actually I was amused, as was Sean Kinsell, who opined that "Grade B Wingnuttia" should henceforth be my drag name.) It's just that I like to know who it is who is saying whatever they say they're saying. This interchangeability of authors (whether they're calling themselves "posters" or "publishers") is confusing.

Anyway, while I can't be 100% sure who wrote the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't post, I'm pretty sure it was Jesse Taylor, because he originally had responded in the comments.

I'm wondering about something, though. Right now, Amanda Marcotte is getting a lot of attention. Glenn Reynolds is calling her post-pulling marathon "the first Blog Scandal of Campaign 2008" and he linked a detailed discussion by Beltway Blogroll. As I say, I don't know whether there are any ethical standards governing post pulling. Probably not, as the right to say something includes the right to retract it, take it down, erase it, delete it, whatever.

The consequence is that there might be a loss of credibility, because when it is done for political reasons or to avoid embarrassment, it has all the elements of a coverup.

But what is it when you put your name on something already written by someone else? I'm in no position to accuse Amanda Marcotte of plagiarism, and Jesse Taylor might not care. In light of a similar pattern noted by Below the Beltway, I suspect there's mutual scrubbing going on.

It all makes me wonder whether there's "any there there" at Pandagon. Whether that matters, I guess, depends on whether you like Pandagon.

The odd thing about this is that I haven't been reading Pandagon as I should, and because I'm only beginning to discover the joys of Amanda Marcotte, I'm glad they still have the Wayback Machine or I wouldn't be able to play catch up with Pandagon's Golden Oldies.

However, I don't think she (or he) should have pulled a single post. Whether you agree with them or not, they're great. Just delightfully unhinged. Not to hurt anyone's feelings, but Amanda Marcotte reminds me of (dare I say it?) Ann Coulter!

I mean, in terms of sheer vituperation, I don't know whether even Ann could match this lovely mouthful:

I write about this shit day in and day out and still it's so hard for me to understand sometimes how the conservative dickwad pundits and politicians don't grasp that women are human, but instead live in some fantasy world where women are actually deceitful cunt-monsters, god's accident, vile sperm-sucking Eves who need to be forced by law to tell our husbands that we are "in trouble", if you will, because we can't be trusted not to sneak around out of sure feminine wiliness. It's just insane, it really is. I guarantee you that 99% of women who've ever been pregnant or just were afraid they were, went immediately to the man they figure got them there and told him first. The other 1% have their reasons for not, reasons that are surely out of the reach of any stupid conservative asswipe who thinks god was testing men by making women willful.
That's great stuff. I don't write that way, but that's because I'm stuck with this stodgy "logical and reasonable" style which probably holds me back as a blogger. My logical and reasonable side recognizes that while Amanda Marcotte might have had a legitimate point (that most women would tell the father of a baby before aborting it), it became lost in the fog of highly vituperative rhetoric. But is being reasonable really her goal? I don't think so. No more than being reasonable is Ann Coulter's goal.

The goal is success, which brings me back to my point. Amanda Marcotte is not as successful as Ann Coulter, but I think that's only because she's holding herself back by doing things like deleting posts. Using the Ann Coulter model, instead of holding back, she should turn up the volume. If she's fired by the Edwards campaign, why, she could leverage that into a bestseller. Plus, unlike Ann, Amanda is steeped in the raging victim culture, so she could claim to be a righteously indignant victim of John Edwards to gain extra leverage. (Sorry, but Ann Coulter could never have claimed with a straight face she was a victim of the National Review!)

When you're in the vituperation business, concealing what you think is really lame. Were I Amanda Marcotte's career counselor, I'd advise her to hold a press conference with a weenie in one hand and a knife in the other and just really let loose. Wave the knife and scream like a banshee from SCUM! Threaten to give those "stupid conservative asswipes" something to really wipe their asses over!

But how can I offer advice -- even gratuitous and unreasonable advice -- to someone if I can't be sure who it is I'm advising?

Does anyone know for a fact that Amanda Marcotte isn't Jesse Taylor in drag?

I mean, post reassignment is one thing, but consider her (or his) boss....

Edwards.jpg

Yeah, it's an old picture, but some things are best left the way they are.

posted by Eric on 02.04.07 at 04:01 PM





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Comments

I don't write that way, but that's because I'm stuck with this stodgy "logical and reasonable" style which probably holds me back as a blogger.

Heh (apropos "logical and reasonable"):

Unfortunately lots of those files from the Jesse days were lost during the migration because a) I am a dumbass, and b) MT’s exports are terribly inefficient. Later on, due to another weird table gaffe, whole posts were lost and comments and commenters were listed as true posts, while the posts were relegated to comments or gone altogether.

and

And for anyone who is confused about my last comment, I’m the one who did the migrations (poorly) and the blog design. We knew the posts Auguste mentions were gone long ago, but hell if I ever thought that would be elevated to scandal status.

ema   ·  February 4, 2007 06:01 PM

Thanks for coming, but I think you're losing the best stuff during the migration.

In particular, I'd like to know more about the "stupid conservative asswipe" post. It's been linked by Feminist blogs, and the original URL is here:

http://www.pandagon.net/archives/2005/10/new_low_standar.html

But that post gives me a 404, and when I enter "stupid conservative asswipe" at the search bar, I get two totally different posts that don't use the term.

If I put the term "stupid conservative asswipe" in quotes, I get a "Not Found."

Eric Scheie   ·  February 4, 2007 07:05 PM

Unfortunately, I'm not involved in the migration thing at all. [Just a regular Pandagon/occasional CV reader (and not a very techy one at that).]

I'm sure if you ask Lauren she'll be able to give you the tech details.

ema   ·  February 4, 2007 10:50 PM

Sorry ema. I thought the above words were yours!

:)

Thanks for the clarification.

(Glad I didn't say you're "not a crook." As to who's actually the real crook behind the "not a crook" crook, we'll just have to wait and see....)

Eric Scheie   ·  February 5, 2007 07:06 AM
Classical Values End The Culture War By Restoring Classical Values

Logical and Reasonable

M. Simon   ·  February 5, 2007 08:23 AM

Sociopath.

Amanda Marcotte   ·  February 13, 2007 01:36 PM

Oh dear. And all this time I thought I was a satirist!

Eric Scheie   ·  February 13, 2007 02:30 PM

Marcotee really needs a dictionary - she has a problem with using "big" words incorrectly.

Shawn   ·  February 15, 2007 11:48 AM
pst314   ·  February 15, 2007 09:21 PM


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